Lifestyle Entrepreneur, former professional athlete and current Olympic Hopeful with the USA Men's National Team for Team Handball. Host of The School of Greatness podcast, and salsa dancing fan. More at http://lewishowes.com

How I Leveraged LinkedIn to Create a 7-Figure Business In Three Years

Your possessions have been reduced to a laptop and a suitcase of clothes.

As for a paycheck, your next paycheck is based on whatever odd jobs you can find.

Not exactly the American Dream, huh?

This is the exact situation I found myself in following a career ending injury in 2007 that took me from the AFL (Arena Football League) to my sister’s couch.

Broke, broken and confused, I had no idea what was in store for me next and no idea what I was supposed to do with my life.

Facing Reality

It’s a strange place to find yourself. You’ve worked hard, made sacrifices and have finally achieved your dream. There’s really no words to describe the joy and satisfaction that comes with accomplishing something like that, but the reality is that goals are like anything else in life – temporary.

Anything, and I mean anything can be taken from us in a moments notice. It doesn’t matter what it is – a car, a relationship, a loved one or even a career . Everything we “own” is on the table – that was the first thing I had to accept.

My second realization was that even though I would never play professional football again, I still possessed the characteristics of a professional athlete. Things like discipline, competitiveness and hustle don’t just disappear due to outside forces. Our character can only be surrendered and I had no intentions of putting up the white flag.

Finding the leverage Points

Every situation is going to have its unique benefits, you just have to find them and exploit them. No matter how bad it it may be, your perception of the situation is all that really matters.

The depression started to fade the moment I embraced the understanding that I would no longer be playing Pro football. Instead of saying to myself, “This is a bummer, my life is over. I didn’t get my college degree and I have no back up plan.” I shifted my message to: ”I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to play professional football and achieve my childhood dream. I’m so happy I walked away with a broken wrist and didn’t break my neck or have any serious brain injuries. I’m so excited about all of the possibilities open to me now that I have all of this free time.”

There’s always something to gain from any unfortunate situation – an ally that can assist you. For me, that ally became the isolation that my injury created.

Even though I had no money, I was rich with time.

I also realized the only way I was going to find my way back to any level of success would be to let go of old dreams and embrace something new, so I set my focus on the world of business, marketing and relationships.

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Lewis, It is not “just” your success that moved me, nor your insights about serving a specific niche in specific ways, nor your adept leverage of high tech/high touch gatherings online and in person but also your evident caring and passion for the people you service and for meeting their needs their ways… not just once but in ongoing ways…. you created a vibrant community and somehow managed, in this column, to avoid the buzz words that are often associated with doing so.

On many levels this is a primer for others to see how to host the most valuable place for the kind of people they know best to accomplish greater things together than they can on their own… moving from me to we.

Also your story reminded me of one in Peter Guber’s book, Tell to Win, where as a young many at a major movie studio he put up a bulletin board to show what movie projects were at what stage of production and what people needed for movie-making were available, thus hosting, pre-internet, the go-to place in the studio for others to quickly find the people they needed.

I saw you speak at Yanik Silver’s Underground 8 this year and I was really inspired to pay more attention to LinkedIn! Now I love using LinkedIn – the people that use it are serious business builders and I really enjoy engaging with them and helping them change their lives. Thanks for all of your amazing training!

This is definitely inspirational, especially for other former-pro athletes, who often have a hard time after achieving their childhood dream.

Forbes, however, deserves some chastising for apparently not editing or proofreading this piece. In just several hundred words, there are at least a half-dozen typos or grammatical mistakes. I cut Howes slack on this because it’s not his main gig — but Forbes has no excuse.

I can sympathize with Lewis. After running my own mortgage company for 11 years it all suddenly disappeared overnight, literally. That harsh reality has been something I have had to live with for the past five years and I still struggle to reinvent myself, even with the wealth of knowledge that I have obtained trough the years. Hopefully his newsletter will spark something that I can build on and help me recover from what I’m sure has been the worst 5 years of my adult life.

This is so inspiring! As business owners, we have a lot of ups and downs and it seems that I have more downs lately:( After reading your article, I feel like I am ready to tackle the world! It’s so true that without passion, it doesn’t matter what you do and how much money you make, you will eventually get bored with it. I believe that in everything that we do, we have to have passion. You have a great story and that allows you to be good at what you do. Looking forward to your newsletters.